I was so scared to go on stage as child, says Scots superstar
Annie pays tribute to her roots
IN a career spanning four decades, she has sold 80 million records and earned a haul of honours including four Grammys, eight Brit awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.
Yet Scots pop legend Annie Lennox has revealed that in her earliest days she suffered from crippling stage fright.
As a seven-year-old girl, the singer who would tour the world with The Eurythmics was terrified as she performed concerts in her native Aberdeen.
The 63-year-old made the confession before being inducted into Scotland’s Music Hall of Fame at last night’s Scottish Music Awards.
She dedicated the honour to her parents, who saved to pay for her music lessons and the teachers who encouraged her as a child.
She told the Scottish Mail on Sunday: ‘From the age of seven, the teacher would give me songs or piano pieces that had to be performed in a competitive way at music festivals in Aberdeen.
‘I’d been brought up with this notion that you learn something really well and stand up and perform in front of all these people. It was scary.’
Even as a child she was aware that her father, Thomas, a boilermaker in the Hall Russell shipyard, and mother Mary, a school cook, had scrimped to pay for her music lessons.
Determined to overcome fears about performing in front of an audience, she practised in their small tenement flat in Hutcheon Street, where the outside toilet had to be shared with five other families.
Speaking from her family home in Los Angeles, she said: ‘I always think there is a huge part of me that is coming from my background of stoic hard-working Scots people that came from generations of poverty. You counted every penny and put food on the table and kept the house as warm and as clean as you could – little things that people who haven’t been born into that background can ever understand.
‘It doesn’t leave you. It’s part of your DNA. You have these values and this awareness.
‘One’s parents are always an influence on you in one way or another. My father was very musical and his side of the family used to sing in choirs.’
As a teenager, Miss Lennox joined her school’s military band and toured with the British Youth Wind Orchestra. It stood her in good stead for life on the road as one half of The Eurythmics.
‘I have a lot of gratitude for music lessons and an exposure to music making in Aberdeen,’ she said. ‘I would never have learned to do any of the things that I subsequently did if I hadn’t learned how to play piano, or read music or write music.’
While her childhood memories remain clear, her recollection of fame with Dave Stewart in The Eurythmics is less distinct: ‘There were so many gigs and so many concerts, and we were going in a van or cars or tour buses. It’s a bit of a blur.
‘There were hundreds of concerts all over the world and that’s how I got to travel. I saw the world through the windows of cars and hotel rooms.’
Although unable to attend last night’s awards, she paid tribute to all her teachers in Scotland, reflecting: ‘I’ve been very fortunate that I have made a life through music.
‘That music has been at the core of my existence.’
‘Music has been at the core of my existence’